


Kakuzu and the Temple of Jashin

by privatepenne



Category: Naruto
Genre: Mummy (1999) au, but if brendan frasier decided to fuck the sympathetic mummy instead, some graphic violence (it is kakuhida...)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27982464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/privatepenne/pseuds/privatepenne
Summary: Archaeologist-cum-adventurer Kakuzu is roped into an expedition to Hamunaptra and the long-buried Temple of Jashin. Ostensibly on the search for gold, he'll find much more than he bargained for - everyone in Hamunaptra is playing on Jashin's chess board, and his King has awoken.
Relationships: Hidan/Kakuzu (Naruto)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

"There it is,” Deidara breathed behind him, all excitement and unbloodied wonder. “Hamunaptra.”

“The city of the dead,” Sasori intoned from his camel. Kakuzu shook his head, squinting into the rising sun. Sitting on the horizon like a sizzling egg yolk, a tangible mirage, scraped the looming wall of the broken and forgotten city.

Kakuzu had been here a few months prior on a failed excursion with the Egyptian Army. They’d run into a group of local militia guarding the site and gotten into a pyrrhic shootout that he’d barely survived. Like he’d told Sasori, the only thing waiting for them here was blood and sand… he hadn’t told the prim professor about any of the other things that his eyes had told him that he’d seen while he was there. If anything, the possibility of supernatural goings-on would probably make him even more curious. Kakuzu had told him that there wasn’t anything worth seeing in the dead city already, and that he probably wouldn’t leave alive, but Sasori had been adamant.

And he paid well. Almost well enough to compensate for the absolute omnishambles that this trip had already turned into.

“Beat you to the city!” Tobi hollered from a few meters away, whooping and cracking his whip. His horse reared and whinnied, nearly knocking him off, and startling the horses that his American crew were on – he took off over the ridge across the stark sand. Kakuzu nodded curtly to Sasori and Deidara and kicked his own camel’s flank. He shot off (as much as you can shoot off while riding a damn camel) and his clients followed after him, coughing on the Americans’ dust, a veritable stampede. Sasori’s legs were too short to reach the stirrups – he’d be painfully sore the next day – and Deidara refused to put his long blond hair up. He’d told them to wear a mask – he always did – but it somehow offended their English sensibilities.

Well, he wasn’t going to let Tobi and that spiky-haired American who hired him get a leg up on them – he was Kakuzu Taki, the infamous Egyptologist, the finder and seller of miracles – he’d been paid to unearth the city of the dead, and regardless of how wise it was, that was what he intended to do.

* * *

“What is it about this place that’s so important, anyways?” Kakuzu asked Sasori.

The three of them were underground, in what must have been the most superficial layer of the underground tomb, and it was late. The Americans had shuffled them out of the overground excavation site where some treasure was reportedly buried – Kakuzu assumed that they wanted to go beneath the earth as much as he did (not at all, thank you, he wanted to survive) and Sasori had suggested that they establish a site of our own.

“We’re adults,” he’d said cooly, staring Shikamaru and his armed posse of archaeologists down with immense confidence for a man that Kakuzu could probably hoist over his shoulder with one hand. “We can come to an amenable compromise.”

Now they were established for the afternoon. Deidara had shaken a day’s hard ride of desert sand out of his hair and was poking around the dark, dry vestibule that they were in, and Kakuzu and Sasori were jabbing at the ceiling trying to access whatever Sasori thought was hidden under the statue of Anubis above them. At least it was a little cooler than it was outside, a small compensation for the ominous vibes that the black-walled room gave off.

Sasori spat dust, shaking his head furiously. “For ages, we’ve thought that Hamunaptra was a myth, a sort of an apocryphal, metaphorical land of the dead. But there was just enough evidence-“ another plume of dust as Kakuzu jabbed his trowel particularly aggressively “-of a physical location for Hamunaptra that people have never stopped looking for it. It’s the discovery of a lifetime, even if there’s nothing here but bricks.”

And sand and blood and the persistent feeling that he was being watched. “I hope that we’re not doing all of this digging for bricks, Mr. Akasuna.”

“ _Mr. Akasuna_ ,” Deidara teased distantly.

“Of course not, there’s also supposed to be treasure beyond our wildest imagination. Not that that matters much in the academic world. And – more importantly – it’s supposed to be the seat of the temple of Jashin. The only one. Apparently Jashin was too violent and dangerous a god to worship widely… but the thought was that one temple was still necessary to give him a foothold in the mortal world.”

“How are you still talking with a mouth full of dust?” Deidara asked, sounding bored. “You ever get tired of hearing yourself talk?”

“I know about the cult of Jashin,” Kakuzu said. “It was banned in the New Dynasty, after the imperial court of Amon was destroyed.”

“Supposedly that’s one of the reasons why Hamunaptra was buried, in the end,” Sasori sighed, planting his hands on his hips and looking up. The brick that they’d been working on didn’t seem to be budging. “With all of its treasure. And all of the curses that kept it from being pilfered.”

“Until today,” Kakuzu said, aiming one last calculated jab at the corner of the brick of limestone. With a great groan, it started to slide loose. More than just that brick, though, grout from all the surrounding ones seemed to start shedding grit…

He shoved Sasori to the side and the two fell just in time to avoid the shattering impact of whatever the ceiling was supporting falling down into the chamber with them. As the dust and grit settled, Kakuzu could almost swear that he heard the swishing noise of someone whispering, tugging at the fringes of his ability to hear. He spat, rubbed his face and shook his hair.

“Everyone alright?” he barked.

“It’s a sarcophagus!” Sasori exclaimed, evidently unharmed (or not seriously enough to dent his flat-affected enthusiasm.) The red-haired professor popped up on the other side of it and ran the flat of his hand over the painted exterior, brushing away the cake of a millennia of dust and revealing the rich reds and blacks underneath; paint, inlaid stones, the riches of a thousand years. Deidara shouldered his way over to look at it, too, coughing, examining the painted face on the bathtub-sized block of stone.

“It’s not like any one that I’ve seen before,” Sasori breathed. “Look, the skin is painted black. And the design on the face – it’s skeletal. Oh, I need to take a look at the friezes on the side – there are almost no depictions of skeletons in ancient Egyptian art… Deidara, where is my camera?”

It’s the face of Jashin, something said to Kakuzu. “The face of Jashin,” he repeated. How did that get into his mind? He frowned. He was only vaguely acquainted with late Kingdom history, and not at all with the fringe religions. Strange.

“There was a legend that the priests of Jashin would ritualistically sacrifice themselves for their god. One day one of them would be so beloved by their god that he’d bring them back as his ultimate tool, and they’d be granted the power to destroy the whole world. Plunge it into exquisite pain and darkness. The world of the dead, and Jashin’s acolyte as its king.”

“Let’s crack it open, then, shall we?” Deidara asked, handing Sasori a crowbar instead of the camera. “And I think your camera’s over there,” he said, pointing to the foot of the sarcophagus. The linen strap of Sasori’s camera bag peeked out from underneath.

“Deidara, I told you to hold on to it!”

“I did, hn! And then you took it and it was your responsibility!”

Kakuzu let them argue, using his shovel to lever the top of the sarcophagus off. It scraped open to reveal a smaller coffin, still person-shaped, in black obsidian stone.

“Deidara, get a light,” Sasori sighed, resigned to having lost his camera. With a little more illumination, they could see similar skeletal markings carved on the sarcophagus’ face.

“Beloved of the Lord,” Kakuzu stuttered as he traced his fingers over the cartouche at the center of its chest. “Hi-heye…. Hidan, high Priest of Jashin.”

“Well, is anyone going to crack it open, or do I have to get a tool, too?” Deidara commented. “There could be something cool inside.”

“There’s a dead body inside,” Sasori said flatly. “You don’t need to see it to tell that.”

“Don’t you want to see if he’s still alive, though?” Deidara teased. “maybe he’s still fresh and ready to pop up and bring the apocalypse. How would the Journal of Egyptology like that for a research project, hn?”

Kakuzu was already levering the top of the inner sarcophagus open. There were plenty of treats to be collected on a mummy’s person, if you remembered that corpses had forfeited their right to bodily dignity when they shuffled off the mortal coil. They wouldn’t need their jewelry, wherever they were – and Kakuzu could definitely did. Unfortunately this particular specimen that he was uncovering was not as well wrapped and tasteful as most of the ones that he had encountered…

“Ugh, is it still juicy?” Deidara exclaimed when Kakuzu had swung the top portion off. “How does it DO that?”

“Fascinating,” Sasori murmured. “Open it up a little more. It’s not really mummified at all, but it’s still preserved. I can see – yes, I think that that’s the ceremonial stake that they use to kill themselves.”

The smell of rotting flesh hit them and they all drew back. Deidara gagged theatrically. Kakuzu had never seen a body this poorly maintained; black sludgy flesh still clung to it, like meat on cast-off chicken bones; its jaw hung open in a rictus scream; both hands were clutched around a thin black spear underneath its sternum. It couldn’t have been a pleasant death.

“I wonder if its organs were removed,” Sasori whispered, peering in again with wide, morbid eyes. “Move the light down and I’ll get a look.”

“Why are you like this?” Deidara whispered, horrified.

The whispering. Kakuzu looked up, to where evening light was filtering in from cracks in the hole above them. The whispering was getting stronger, stroking the hairs at the back of his neck, plucking at the nerves in his chest. He shivered. This felt profound and wrong but profoundly planned, as though they were intended to be here, to do this, to violate this sacred space.

“It’s getting dark,” he said suddenly. “We’ll set up camp up top while we still have light and keep going tomorrow.”

Sasori made a noise of disappointment but insisted that they close the inner sarcophagus before they climbed back up. Kakuzu took special note of the untarnished gold medallion that the mummy was wearing, hanging between its ribs; a triangle circumscribed within a circle, the symbol of Jashin. It was everywhere in the city. If he ended up leaving this place, he at least liked to know that he’d have something valuable to take with him. He’d seen no indication of the supposed treasure, but then again, all of Sasori’s theories had been accurate so far…

Still. The sooner they left, the better.

* * *

Deidara had spent the evening at the Americans’ campsite, drinking and carousing, while Sasori and Kakuzu had sat by the fire in companionable silence. Sasori was squinting at a book, Kakuzu re-checking his ammunition belt. He didn’t trust Shikamaru at all, and Tobi had stabbed him in the back so many times he should really start wearing chain mail.

There was a howl of laughter from the Americans. “Strange company you keep,” Kakuzu grunted, moving on to his next leather ammo belt. Sasori didn’t look up from his book.

“He’s good at his job, Deidara. Individual researchers like myself can use nimble-handed acquisition specialists like him in the antiquities market.”

“Doesn’t seem like the subtle thief type to me,” Kakuzu grumbled.

“Check your wallet.”

“Hm, I live in Cairo, I’ve learned a thing or two about keeping my wallet in an interior.. in a..” Kakuzu patted the linen-strap folio that he wore underneath his shirt to keep his documents. It was unusually flat; he slipped his fingers into the overlapped seams that formed the front pocket and found it empty. “…how?”

In the flickering light, Sasori might have betrayed the ghost of a smile. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing for him to spend it on out here. Not unless they start playing cards for money, at least.”

Kakuzu shook his head and settled back. He had a little more respect for the outspoken blond now. Just a touch. “Let me know if they do. I’m more worried about him following them down there, though,” he nodded at the entrance to the tomb.

“Why would they do that now? Surely it makes more sense to start exploring after a full night of rest.”

“And let us pick over the good stuff with them? No,” Kakuzu shook his head. “Mark me, the place will be crawling with them once we’re asleep, all trying to be the first ones to find the treasure.”

“What are we doing up here, then? I’m not going to let them be the first ones to explore the temple of Jashin!” Sasori said indignantly.

“If you wait you’ll be the first person who explored it and lived to tell,” Kakuzu said tiredly. “I’ve been in enough tombs to know that they’re lousy with traps. Let the Americans fall into them for us, we’ll go on with clear heads once the sun is up.” He didn’t want to admit that some animal part of his brain also shivered at the thought of entering the maw of the earth at night. It’ll be dark down there in the day, too, he told himself, peeved; like Sasori he also hated the thought of Shikamaru claiming whatever loot was down there. He was a young man, he had time to make his fortune, and Kakuzu at forty-five was just as avaricious as ever, though tempered with bitter experience. Most of the scars on his body were from mortal men, but a few of them were souvenirs from his explorations.

“I’m going to sleep. Let me know if they start gambling,” Kakuzu said, tucking his belts underneath his bag and pulling his camel-cover over his head to block out the light from the fire. Sasori muttered something incredulous about him being able to sleep with all of the ruckus going on, but he knew that he was bone-tired from the ride, too, and sleep would take them all eventually, the first mortal sleep to be had in the Temple of Jashin for three thousand years.

* * *

_My lord, send me a bad man, and let our pain be shared._

The sand above him parted as he floated upwards, his face breaching the surface, eyes closed, like a marble at the top of an hourglass slowly being uncovered. He opened his eyes and stood, the white chalky sand falling from his naked body as he did so, making no noise. It was deafeningly quiet. He had to press his fingers to the angle of his jaw to feel his jugular to make sure that his heart hadn’t stopped. His pulse was just a whisper.

His skin didn’t seem to have any temperature.

He looked up at the sky. Despite the fact that it was black, dizzying, eye-tricking black, the dunes of still white sand around him were still visible. They seemed to glow from within, looking like so many bones – the arch of the ilium, the egg-like occipital shell. So huge as to be hazy in the distance but still tower above him.

Where was he?

A world of infinite stillness. Nothing moved. It was as still as a tomb, untouched. Had anyone ever been to this world to create this? Or did it simply always exist? It was terrible, this stillness, this _lack._

 _What could be a more terrible world than this?_ Kakuzu thought. It wasn’t his own thought in his head, it was simply there, fully formed, as if someone had spoken it in his own voice. _Endless stasis. The death of movement._

All his life, he’d tried to find stability, clung to his old ways and his old habits, clung to his money because it was his best hope for building something stable. With enough of it he could build himself a world where he could never be betrayed – where nothing would ever change. Was this the argument ad absurdum of this philosophy?

He rubbed his fingers together and felt nothing. He touched his face and found it to be perfectly smooth and without heat or cold, like a stone mask made in his image. He looked down – his body was only a little visible, washed out and unremarkable, free of scars and shapes.

_This is the hell of Jashin. This is the sepulcher of feeling._

If he could feel anything at all he would have felt fear, mounting fear, and then existential agony, but he was unable to move to express it. He put his hands to his throat, squeezing, grasping for pain, but felt nothing – like he was wearing a collar of flesh that protected himself.

_Wouldn’t pain feel better than this?_

He screamed noiselessly.

_Wouldn’t feeling anything at all feel better?_

He looked down, and from underneath his sternum, his xyphoid process, the smooth grey skin began to warp outwards and then tear and a thin, jagged spike emerged, grotesquely bloodless, slowly ripping him open from the outside. Blooming behind it he felt pressure in his chest and the suggestion of warmth as it scraped past skin and muscle – the suggestion of pain – of a feeling. In this unbearable anesthesia it was dizzyingly pleasurable and he actually found himself moving to grasp the point of the spike and pull, rending more flesh as it widened as it exited him. The hollowness started to give way to discomfort and painful friction and he found himself laughing now instead of screaming.

_So many have foregone my gift to them, you untaught worshipper, rough-hewn acolyte, you son of Jashin before you suckled at your mother’s breast._

How he was tearing at the wound, ripping the skin like an orange peel, chasing the dizzying satisfaction of sharp pain around his ribs and to his back.

_My Son’s prayers deserve to be answered. It is the wish of all children of Jashin to let their pain be shared. He is my most beloved, sweetest and toothsome, to your vicious liking._

Kakuzu could see all of his ribs now, black and fleshslick like the body in the sarcophagus. Caged inside was a withered black hunk of flesh, beating drily, hooked up to nothing. A useless heart.

“Is this supposed to be a metaphor?” He asked, almost offended.

_Perhaps you should judge him for yourself._

And he woke up to the sound of screaming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully writing this will evict it from my brain so I can go back to studying....


	2. Chapter 2

Kakuzu jumped up, thrashing out of his blanket, halfway to his feet before he remembered to grab the pair of pistols under the bag that he had been using as a pillow. His eyes were full of grit and sand and there was a terrific wind whipping around him, blowing his choppy hair into his eyes. A vigorous rub with his arm, guns splayed out, finally let him see.

“Sasori?” Where’d the little bastard gone? He was alone around their burnt-out fire. The sky was a deep dark blue, near midnight, and it was as cold as the desert always was once the sun had gone down.

The wind was tearing through the camp and he squinted up – a few meters away the Americans, illuminated by the wild dancing flames, were yelling and falling over themselves trying to grab their camp supplies before the wind ripped them away. Kakuzu stepped on his blanket before it was torn away and held a hand up to protect himself from the sand. The screaming wasn’t screaming at all, he groggily realized, but rather the shriek of the sudden hurricane.

“Sasori? Deidara?” He roared. Forget the blanket, where had his clients gone?

“Kakuzu!” He heard Deidara yell. He could barely see his outline as he ran to Kakuzu, dragging Sasori (or a Sasori-shaped bundle) along with him. “Kakuzu!”

“What’s going on?” Kakuzu yelled. The wind snatched his words from his mouth, though, and so he grabbed Deidara by the upper arm and pulled them both to the stone door that marked the entrance of the tomb. At least they’d be safe from the windstorm in there. He was so turned around, so completely out of it, he was acting entirely on instinct now.

They groped through the darkness to the tomb’s entrance, and then they half-tumbled down the carved stairs into the room that they had been in before. Kakuzu heard the Americans shouting over the din, distantly; felt the beginnings of bruises down his hips.

“What happened?” He demanded, patting his two companions. “Hurt?”

“No,” Deidara said, affronted as he was scared. “But Sasori – damn him – Sasori, tell him what you did!”

“What _I_ did?” Sasori asked indignantly, but despite his bluster he sounded terrified, too. “You were the one who bet that tour guide for the Book of Life! What did you think I’d do with it?”

“Not read it, you idiot! Even I know you’re not supposed to do that! And I’m not the Egyptologist!”

“Hold on,” Kakuzu snapped authoritatively. “What happened?”

The wind outside was starting to die down. At least they could hear each other now, but he still could barely see his hand in front of his face.

“I was drinking with the Americans and they said that they found this box in the statue of Anubis,” Deidara started. “Some nice canopic jars and this big old book, and I thought, well, that’s something my man Sasori might like to have, because I’m really nice, hn, so I challenged one of them to a game of cards. And they were awful drunk and I’m awful good at cards so I won it and gave it to Sasori to read, and –“

“I was just sounding it out!” Sasori protested. “There’s a single reference to some kind of pair of books of competing Jashinist rituals in the Cairo museum and I wanted to know if this was one of them!”

“So he reads it out loud, the absolute nutter, and then everything goes to shit! And then _after_ he’s done he realizes that it’s some spell to _raise the dead_!”

Kakuzu sighed. He had a healthy respect for these tombs, mostly for their ingenious surviving traps, but curses? That was beyond the realm of belief. He thought of his dream, the ominous placidity, and then the similar dark folded close around them.

“It’s a freak sandstorm, Deidara. Sasori didn’t curse us. No such thing exists.” He rubbed his eyes. He’d never had something like this happen in the desert, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t. “Come on, let’s go back and get some sleep.”

The sound of footsteps alerted him to the growing glow of fire at the edges of the door above them, and suddenly their window of clear dark sky was filled with a silhouette holding a torch.

“Hollu, anybody down there?” Tobi’s singsong voice drifted down. Oh, hell. “Ka-kuzooooo? I heard that somebody was very naughty and read from the Book of the Big Skeleton God. Was that you, little Lord Fauntleroy?” Was he drunk? He probably was. Jesus wept.

“Go back to sleep, Tobi,” Kakuzu called. At least the extra light let him take one client in each hand and shuffle them up the stairs in front of him. The desert was quiet again, and if it weren’t for the other campers cursing and clanking about it would have been completely desolate and cold. He shouldered past Tobi, still in his black robes and garish orange mask and aura of mirth, and pushed the two Englishmen in the direction of their packs.

“Make sure you aren’t missing anything and get some actual rest. I’ll sit watch.”

The two of them didn’t protest; they both still seemed rattled. Sasori was clutching something to his chest; Kakuzu hoped it was his precious book, since he seemed to care about it so much. This wasn’t his first docket of jumpy passengers, but their milquetoast superstition never got less annoying. It made them feel better when he said that he’d watch over them; little did they know, he knew how to sleep sitting up.

* * *

This was one hell of an unsatisfactory situation.

“This is one hell of an unsatisfactory situation,” he said. “One of the Americans must’ve dragged it out of here last night.”

“But why?” Sasori asked. He sounded genuinely crestfallen. Maybe the brush with the divine last night had scared some emotion into his high British spleen. “It was just bones.. there was nothing there that they could have found interesting.

That wasn't true - the mummy had been wearing a medallion that could fetch a few hundred dollars, but Kakuzu didn't say that. The two of them, plus Deidara, were staring into the empty inner sarcophagus in the first chamber. The wan morning light filtering in from above illuminated its empty recesses, completely smooth except for the lingering stains of decomposition and the stink of heating corpse. The mummy had disappeared.

“You woke it up with that book, Sasori, it walked out to go end the world,” Deidara said resolutely. “I mean, the fact that the world’s still obviously here shouldn’t be taken as proof that the world hasn’t ended yet.”

“Be quiet. Haven’t you got any respect for the desecration of artefacts?”

“Plenty of it, that’s why I do it all the time, hn” Deidara snipped back. Reaching into the pocket of his dusty linen jacket he pulled out something small and dark, about the size of his palm. “I pried this off of the wall. Look, we might have lost a leaky body, but there’s still plenty more to explore! Chin up, you got an old book, I’ve got something shiny of my own, and even if the Americans find a room full of gold we won’t be empty handed.”

They all looked at the dark scarab-shaped gem in Deidara’s hand. Sasori pursed his lips.

“I don’t like it, that’s all. Especially after last night.”

Kakuzu suppressed the urge to sigh. He had to preclude all this talk about rituals and raising the dead. “Deidara’s right. Come on, let’s go on. You wanted to see the Temple of Jashin, after all.” He pressed them both between the shoulder blades, towards the maw of the door deeper into the tomb. The Americans had blustered through a half hour before, metaphorical guns blazing, all trying to out-yell how spooked they were by last night's storm. Sasori had thought it prudent to hang back a little – again, traps – and to examine the Book and the sarcophagus more.

Kakuzu, though, Kakuzu needed to be on his feet. Every time he closed his eyes he felt like he was back in that empty chasmic world, tearing himself madly apart to feel a spark of pain.

They set on carefully through the narrow, high-ceilinged corridor as it slanted downwards, Kakuzu in the lead and Deidara bringing up the back, both with torches. Their descent was silent.

“What was that?” Kakuzu stopped and looked back. The other two looked at him expectantly. “Did someone say something?”

“Not me,” Sasori said flatly. “Or me,” Deidara added. Kakuzu set his jaw, nodded, and turned to continue on. He could have sworn someone had said his name. This damn place… the same oppressive presence he’d felt when he was here months ago, when he’d seen the sand crash like a wave over a platoon of soldiers and drown them underneath. What kind of man comes back to a place that can kill you like that? How dumb and foolhardy was he? Did he really need that money so badly? And yet here he was, anyway, and the terrors were beginning anew.

They were disgorged into another room, one with ornately carved walls that Sasori immediately started cooing over. “I bet that they didn’t even glance at this,” he said, referring to the Americans as he knelt down to examine an intricate scene. “nothing to sell here. Look – I’ve never seen this kind of procedure, this – ritual, in all my years of studying. Look! Deidara!”

“I’m looking, hn!”

Kakuzu looked, too, at the tableau that ran all around the wall of men in profile tearing at themselves and impaling themselves on spears and pikes. Lines of impaled heads, stylized rivers of blood that flowed down to the red-tile floor.

“That’s grotesque,” Deidara mused. “Wicked.”

As if on cue, a shrill, long scream met them from deeper into the tomb.

The three of them looked at each other.

“Nope!” Deidara said. “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

“Agreed,” Sasori said quickly. “Kakuzu?”

He was looking down the pitch-black hallway. He couldn’t identify who it’d been that screamed. Part of him said – leave them to their own problems and save yourself – but there was a part of him that grudgingly admitted that as an experienced tomb-explorer it was incumbent on him to do what he could in an emergency. They’d probably dropped something on their foot.

“You two stay here, or go back out if you want. Don’t come further in without me,” he ordered. After a moment of consideration he unholstered one of his pistols and held it out to them. “Which one of you knows how to use this?”

Sasori took it. Deidara made a noise of surprise. “What? We hunted foxes at our estate.”

“Of course you did, hn.”

Kakuzu took his other pistol in hand and nodded at them. The real threat on expeditions like these wasn’t found inside the tomb, it was within the party. He had an awfully bad feeling about things. Nonetheless, satisfied that they were armed and well-instructed, he set out further into the tomb at a light jog.

“Tobi? Shikamaru! What’s going on down here!” He called. Eventually the walls dropped away a bit and judging by the echoes of his footsteps, he must have found a room. He slowed down. “Hello? Is anybody here?” He heard a noise, a scraping, somehow organic one. He couldn’t tell how far it was away, but he dropped down low, raised his torch and cocked his pistol. The sound of the hammer sliding back was deafening, a warning. The response was a slow gurgle from in front of him, and then a voice mumbling.

“Which one are you? I’ll shoot.” He said coldly, inching forward. Everything felt too detailed now; his mind was working overtime cataloguing every sensation, the chill down his neck, the dusty smell of old rot, the sound of something dripping.

And suddenly, something lurched out at him, roaring. From what he could see in the dim torchlight it looked like a human, or something that once had been a human, but absolutely ravaged, flesh hanging off of it in great hanks – not that he saw very much before he instinctively slammed several rounds into its chest. The creature screeched, blown back by the impact before drawing itself up. Kakuzu watched in horror as its decimated ribcage knit itself back together with a sound like cooking meat. It looked back up again, its definitely-human eyes fierce, and screamed at him.

Behind him, he saw the dim body of one of the Americans – the big one, kneeling and leaning backwards, unmoving – a familiar spear plunged through his chest.

“Deidara was right,” he said to himself with a firm nod. Absolutely grotesque. Rotten luck, Taki. Discretion is the better part of valor, he told himself as he turned around and took off.

Instead of going back to the surface – which would have been the smart thing to do – he travelled further down into the tomb, which meant that he was caged in a booby-trapped maze populated by a pack of trigger-happy yankees, Tobi, and some kind of… _mummy monster_. God, he’d be having nightmares about that jaw unhinging for the rest of his life. At least he seemed to have lost it, since he hadn’t heard anything behind him for a few minutes. This was definitely not worth the money. He’d find his way out, hopefully with everyone else in tow, and take everyone back to Cairo treasure or not.

He kept up his brisk pace until he reached what felt like another big room. There were torches on the wall, though and he lit one with his – it sputtered to life, and in a beautiful arc, the sconces down the rest of the room lit up, too.

“Clever,” he mused. The room must have been the size of one of the big conference halls in Cairo, with enormous columns the size of – well, big columns, and statues of jackal-headed men decorated with gilt that glinted in the light. In the middle of the square room was a raised round dais cast in the same white rock as the rest of it, but illuminated in golden firelight, it looked as creamy as skin. The entire chamber looked peaceful, untouched, as if its prior inhabitants had left for lunch break. Filled with a strange sense of solemnity Kakuzu approached the dais, holstering his gun.

There was something laid on top of it, some kind of spear. No, not a spear. As he approached it he realized that it was some kind of scythe, with three long, ornate blades at the top, placed deliberately on the pedestal, which was carved with the Jashinist triangle. This must have been where they performed their human sacrifices, he thought, remembering Sasori’s paintings. He reached out and let his hand slide over the cool metal of the scythe, the handle that nobody had touched in thousands of years, the amazingly unstained stone underneath.

From the doorway -somebody said something and Kakuzu turned, quickly, crouching low to prepare for a fight. And then he stared, and stared some more, and then altogether forgot what he was going to do.

Standing in the doorway, striking a gloriously sharp contrast to the dark entryway, was a complete stranger dressed in a shendyt and a long, gilded robe. The most arresting thing about him, though was his face, the intense, hungry eyes in his handsome shadowed face, the hair that seemed almost white in comparison to the darkness around him.

The man said something else, and Kakuzu’s brain put two and two together and realized that he was speaking in ancient Egyptian. He’d gotten a few degrees in his time, he knew as much about speaking that dead tongue as anyone in the field.

“I said,” (Kakuzu thought that he said) “you shouldn’t touch other people’s toys, old man.”

Kakuzu stared, then glanced around the room to see where Tobi was hiding, probably kicking his legs in glee at setting up such an elaborate prank. A death, a freak sandstorm and a mysterious man dressed like a Follies girl. This trip really had it all.

“Whosever this belonged to won’t be using it,” Kakuzu said carefully. Then, just for fun, he picked the scythe up, feeling its impressive weight – it must be ceremonial, he couldn’t imagine actually using this for fighting or threshing. “And I’ve had a bugger of a time getting here and I’d like something to show for it. This should sell well.”

The man smiled, a broad, off-center thing.

“Are you with the Americans?” He asked smoothly. He wouldn’t be thrown off by an amateur prank. It had to be a prank, regardless or the fact that he didn’t recognize this stranger from Shikamaru’s crew and this tomb had been sealed as tightly as any he’d seen for millennia. The stranger approached him, with a powerful economy of movement in his steps, and Kakuzu felt the back of his neck prickle. Nonetheless he stood his ground. “Whatever trick this is, someone on your crew’s dead. I recommend we find your team and find out who killed him before we do any more exploring.”

The stranger was just a few steps from him and still staring at him intensely and Kakuzu couldn’t help but look down at the simple gold medallion between his collarbones, the same amulet of Jashin that he’d almost taken from the mummy yesterday.

“Oh, that was me. I needed a snack,” Beloved of Jashin, High priest Hidan, said casually. He reached out, slowly, like he was approaching a startled animal, out to Kakuzu’s face. To his credit, he didn’t flinch when Hidan passed his hand down the air in front of his face, like he was stroking him through a veil. He felt like he was hypnotized, moving through honey instead of air. One finger found the edge of his mask and tugged.

“Imagine me waking up, my body destroyed, looking like a dried date… those fucking priests took my organs out when I died, that’s what it was. Jashin won’t give me my full power until I’m all put back together again.” He pulled Kakuzu’s mask down past his nose and his eyes lit up. “You seen them anywhere? You’ll help me get ‘em back again, won’t you? Then maybe you can put another organ in me. You’re not bad looking for an old grave rob-“

He was cut off when Kakuzu punched him as hard as he could. His head snapped back and he was sent to his knees.

“Absolutely fucking not!” Kakuzu snapped in english. “No mummies, no curses, I don’t care what you are. Not on my watch!”

Hidan drew back, cursing, staring at him amazed and pouting through a bloody hand. “You broke my fucking nose! Fucker!”

He lunged at Kakuzu, who had nowhere to go and instead hoisted the small of his back onto the the dias and kick Hidan in the chest. The priest grabbed onto his boot, though, and the two of them tumbled down to the elaborately inlaid floor, the scythe clattering down beside them. As he tried to hold the priest at arm’s length Kakuzu realized that Hidan was laughing, as blood slicked his face from his broken nose.

“Jashin’s gonna love you! You’re _fun_!”

Kakuzu got his hand over Hidan’s mouth and held him to the floor, where he suddenly stopped wriggling and instead took Kakuzu’s wrist in his hands like he was daring him to press down harder. Kakuzu wracked his brain for the ancient words he was grasping for, grabbing Arabic instead, fumbling out – “I don’t care about your god or what he thinks of me. You’re a-“ what was the word for ‘random psychopath’ “-strange murderer, and if you don’t tell me what you’re doing here I _am_ going to kill you.”

Kakuzu’s grip was slick with blood and Hidan tried to wrest his head free to bite him. He was rewarded with a sharp slap to the face. Kakuzu was straddling him on the ground now, panting, taking advantage of his superior height and weight (although Hidan was impressively pugilistic himself.)

“You can try to kill me again, I guess, but it won’t work any better than it did last time.” Hidan sighed. He ran his hands up Kakuzu’s arm, trailing blood with them, then up to where his sleeve was rolled over his elbow. “You heathens don’t appreciate a good ritual sacrifice, do you.”

Kakuzu tried to lean back to avoid the bloody fingers dancing their way up to the collar of his shirt to tug on it. That monster that he’d shot at – was that what he was talking about? Had that been Hidan? The priest seemed to sense his hesitation and he smiled as though it were him on top of Kakuzu and not the other way around – his face flushed with pleasure and looking as though he hadn’t had his nose shattered a few moments ago. There was no way that this Apollon man was the monster that he’d shot, or the mummy moldering in its sarcophagus.. but who else would speak an obscure ancient language so fluently? How could someone have slipped into the tomb without anyone knowing?

“What was that thing you used on me, anyways? Some kind of explosive? Hurt like hell. I fuckin’ love it. I’m guessing He sent you to keep me company and help me get my heart back…”

“You’re insane,” Kakuzu said resolutely. He had to believe that. The man was pulling down his shirt, frowning at the buttons, and Kakuzu grabbed both his wrists in one hand and let go of his face to pin him to the ground.

“Yeah I am, that’s why I’m the head priest.” He slid his knee upwards, rubbing between Kakuzu’s, grinning. “You got a minute to hear about our god Jashin? He’s a big proponent of mutual pleasure.” He ground his leg into Kakuzu’s crotch, and he was too frankly surprised to slap him away again. This entire situation defied description. It had to be some kind of elaborate joke. He was being seduced by a madman that claimed to be a reanimated mummy who had probably just killed an excavator and Kakuzu was letting it happen, in fact his body was becoming quite interesting in the proceedings...

Well, he didn’t care for Americans much anyways. 

And it had been so long since he’d had anyone pursue him like this. Sometimes he liked to think that he was a strong man, but all it took was a few clothed touches and a bit of adrenaline and here he was, coming unraveled.

Pushing Hidan's hands further up, stretching his heaving chest open to him, he lowered himself down. Hidan tilted his head up, kohl-lined eyes slipping closed, lips just open enough for Kakuzu to hear the familiar whisper of his breath. It was comforting, now, no longer ominous. He leaned down and hungrily took his blood-crusted lower lip between his teeth and followed it with a slow, mouthy kiss.

Hidan moaned into his mouth, shamelessly for what was really a chaste schoolboy kiss, and then kissed back with characteristic ferocity. Kakuzu had to lean down on one elbow to counterbalance himself and push back against his hot, wet mouth. For a 3000 year old mummy, he felt bracingly alive. And he tasted like blood and kissed like a barfight. Kakuzu was enchanted.

A slick tongue made its way across his bottom lip and his own tongue joined it, reaching out to explore another dark tomb. One of Hidan’s legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him down against him, and the fine linen of his shendyt did nothing to hide the effect that this was having on the priest as he ground up against him. A hand, having slipped out from Kakuzu’s, resumed its previous station tugging his shirt from his trousers and slipping under the hem to trace up his chest.

Kakuzu grunted as warm fingers caught on a scar underneath his costal margin, then slid generously down to his trousers to tug at the front placket.

“What the fuck are you wearing,” Hidan complained against Kakuzu’s lips before he was pulled back into their sloppy, violent kiss. “ _Tight_.”

“Mm,” Kakuzu responded. Awful impatient, this Hidan, if that was who he really was. He let go of his wrists altogether and slipped his freed hand around to the back of Hidan’s neck under his feathery silver hair and gave it a tug. “Patience.”

Hidan shot him a look of almost comical frustration, but his pupils were blown wide with pleasure. Not used to having his knuckles rapped, he guessed. Kakuzu had made a miscalculation, letting his hands go; with unreal speed, Hidan had grabbed him about the waistband of his trousers and flipped them both over so that he was straddling Kakuzu now, and he tugged his shirt off completely.

“Praise be to Jashin,” he breathed reverently, staring down at Kakuzu, eyes glinting in the firelight.

“Can we leave him out of this?” he replied, but even then, Kakuzu’s hands were at Hidan’s knees, rucking up the fine pleated cloth to feel the skin and swells of muscle underneath. By some alchemy his fear had been completely supplanted by a monstrous clawing hunger to feel this stranger's bare skin against him, grind his face against the stone dais and fuck him open raw, hear him laugh as he rode Kakuzu and tore at his flesh, a bouquet of new wounds to scar over.

“KAKUZU!”

Both of their heads snapped up at the sound of running feet.

“KAKUZU, ARE YOU DOWN HERE?!” It was Deidara.

Kakuzu looked up – Hidan was looking to the doorway still, his face the picture of furious frustration. His eyes flicked down to Kakuzu. And just as Deidara popped up in the door Hidan dissolved into a sheet of fine white sand in Kakuzu’s arms, whipping up in an immense whirling cloud of white dust that spiraled up to the ceiling, slashing past the torches, then whipping over Deidara’s shoulder into the darkened hallway. Deidara screamed and jumped out of the way as it disappeared with a ghostly wail.

“What the hell was that, Kakuzu? Who was that? Did he just dissolve? Where's your shirt, hn?”

Kakuzu stared at him blankly, slowly reaching up to touch his mouth. It was still tacky with spit and gritty from dried blood. “Kakuzu, man, you have to get up, everything has gone to absolute hell up there, there’s a huge storm and flesh eating BEATLES and someone’s died and now you’re here getting _spoony_ with a – with a –“

“Maybe it’s hallucinogenic gas,” Kakuzu said unconvincingly to himself as Deidara continued on. To have a warm, heavy, wanting body pressed up against him one second and then gone the next – if he couldn’t trust his own senses, what could he trust?

But if Hidan were real then that would mean that the rest of the promise of Jashin’s curse was real, and Kakuzu’s bad day was about to get considerably worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a mummy that feeds on comments... pwease let me know if you liked it.. I only saw The Mummy once but I was INSPIRED!


	3. Chapter 3

“You! You killed Chouji!”

“I’ve got no idea who Chouji is!” Kakuzu snapped back. “And no, I didn’t kill anyone!”

“I never thought I’d be saying it, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about than the dead guy!” Deidara called from over Kakuzu’s broad shoulder.

Deidara was looking up at the sky, still panting, out of breath from his and Kakuzu’s sprint out of the tomb. It was black out, roiling with clouds, casting the whole desert in a ghostly monochromatic grey. Just like last night the wind was fiercely whistling past them and it was difficult for Kakuzu to hear what the devastated looking American was yelling at him.

Kakuzu almost had it in him to be glad that the rest of the Americans all seemed to be accounted for, bracing against the wind while they secured their campsites. The head of their expedition, the spiky haired Shikamaru, had grabbed Kakuzu just as he’d resurfaced from the tomb.

Chouji must have been the unfortunate member of the expedition that Hidan had sacrificed. He told Shikamaru that, knowing exactly how insane he sounded – he left out the part about the monster turning into a handsome, fully-constituted priest afterwards, of course.

“That’s the most ridiculous damn thing I’ve ever heard,” one of the other Americans said. “Mummies? You really expect us to believe that?”

“Mummies! What about daddies?” Tobi asked gleefully. He’d materialized behind Shikamaru, seemingly from thin air, having emerged form the tomb after Kakuzu and Deidara. Kakuzu had half a mind to slap him upside the head for abandoning his clients and letting them get lost in a dangerous dig, but he was sure that Shikamaru got the guide that he had paid for.

“I’m just telling you what I saw. Why the hell would I want to kill any of you?”

“Because you want the treasure of Hamunaptra for yourself!” Shikamaru yelled. “I know all about you, Taki, you’d stab your own mother in the back for another dollar. You've got a reputation for being the most feckless son-of-a-bitch in Egypt and now you've got my friend's blood on your hands, too.”

Kakuzu clenched his fist. Anger rose up in him like bile and it would be so, so easy to reach over and give him a satisfying little tap to the jaw – he was already warmed up and ready for another row. But no, that would just confirm his suspicions. Besides, Deidara was right, they did have a lot more pressing problems to worry about. It was almost as dark as it had been the night before and the clouds right above them were starting to circle with alarming speed. If they didn't make the decision to leave now, they'd have to get through the desert blind.

“You don’t know me at all,” Kakuzu responded darkly. “I’m not that kind of man.”

“What kind are you, then, huh?”

“The kind that’s going to _save_ all of your asses. Whatever’s in that tomb that Sasori woke up can’t get its full power until it has all of its preserved organs. I’m guessing that those are the canopic jars that you found with the Book of the Dead yesterday.” He looked around. “Everyone! We need to get out of here and take those jars with us. Once we put some distance between us and _him_ then we can figure out how to kill him permanently.”

“You’re just trying to weasel your way out of justice,” Shikamaru accused, stepping towards him. But Tobi was suddenly there, throwing an arm around his neck jovially, his visible eye crinkling.

“Hey, now, Mr. Kakuzu and I’ve been attached at the hip for years, Shika! He’s a sour old man, but come now, if he wanted to kill someone, he obviously would have shot them! He’s got such a hypercompensatory armory, after all,” he gestured to Kakuzu, who’d requisitioned his second pistol from Sasori after he’d resurfaced. Kakuzu resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “And if he says that we should go, we’ll go! Otherwise _I’ll_ go with him and leave you all here to die of thirst in the desert! Won't that be fun!”

Shikamaru’s eyes narrowed as he shook Tobi’s arm off. “... Fine. But you’re not getting within ten feet of those jars, Taki, if that’s the only valuable thing that we end up getting from this damn tomb. And we’re coming right back once this blows over.”

“Fine.” Kakuzu snarled. “I’m not letting any of you out of my sight. If Hi- if he gets all of those jars, than this-“ he gestured upwards “- is going to look like a weekend promenade.”

Shikamaru shot Tobi a venomous look, then spun around to gather the rest of his team and their camp. Kakuzu considered grabbing Tobi by one billowing black sleeve, but then decided to let him pass. He didn’t understand why the man was helping him. He probably had something to gain from it – Kakuzu would bet that he had some treasure stuffed in his pockets from when he absconded from his team and left them to die. Or maybe Tobi had finally decided, after years of sabotaging expeditions, to actually take something seriously… no, he was probably stealing treasure.

Sasori was staring out over the crags and toppled pillars of Hamunaptra, crushing the book of the Dead to his chest, buffeted by sandy wind. Kakuzu grabbed him by the upper arm and pulled him over to their camels, which Deidara was strapping up.

“You started this, Akasuna. What do we do?” He asked _sotto voce_. Sasori shook his head, still looking a little lost.

“I don’t – ... two days ago we didn’t think that Hamunaptra really existed,” he started. “And now it does, and so does Jashin and his curse. I tried to read as much of this as I could-“ he tapped the book – “and it doesn’t say anything about how to destroy what the original spell brought back to life. I need to do more research. The museum in Cairo, perhaps, where I adjunct.”

“If we can make it there,” Kakuzu grumbled, briskly hoisting the professor up onto the camel like a light sack of potatoes and handing him the reigns. “I’m going to need to keep an eye on the Americans. They’re going to split the moment we reach civilization, and if Hidan finds them and gets his body back together, we’re done for. You’ll have to figure out how to end this yourself.”

Sasori sighed, obviously inconvenienced. “I suppose I can look over the old tablets that mentioned Hamunaptra. The Bainbridge scholars could never tell their _nekheb_ from their _nekhen_. Maybe there’s something there that they missed…”

Kakuzu gave his camel a slap to the haunch and sent it off after Tobi, who was already on his way towards the gate of Hamunaptra, beating against the wind. Deidara followed them, and Kakuzu swung up onto his camel at last, behind the Americans, bringing up the back of the caravan. Everyone seemed eager to leave before the storm got worse – thunder was already rumbling, the dry air felt alive with static – things felt taut with danger.

They’d have to kill Hidan, of that he was sure. The only other alternative was letting him destroy the world. And Kakuzu, grudgingly, did have a material investment in his own existence.

As they left, Kakuzu took a last look back at the stone walls that formed the opening of the tomb; the half-buried statue of Anubis that had guarded Hidan’s tomb. Now they were almost impossible to see. Through the beating sandy wind and the mid-day blackness, though, he thought he saw the shimmer of a pale figure standing in the darkened doorway. He rubbed his eyes, the only part of his face that was exposed, and looked back again – there was nothing there.

* * *

As soon as they got within Cairo’s city limits, the Americans, as he had predicted, scattered. He guessed that the first ones to leave would be the ones carrying mummy bits, since they all seemed a little spooked by the idea that they’d be hunted down by a demon priest (Shikamaru’s staunch incredulity notwithstanding.) He let them leave after Deidara had sidled up to him and handed off the contents of his knapsack – he’d swiped a piece from one of the runners, a smooth grey canopic jar the size of a flowerpot. Kakuzu knew that Shikamaru had another one.

All they needed was one piece, one to keep away from Hidan before Sasori found out how to destroy him for good, so the further away they all were from each other the better. The Americans’ greed and instinct for self-preservation would actually help them out.

And he’d keep the final piece. If Hidan found the three other canopic jars with his organs inside, only Kakuzu would stand between him and global obliteration.

“You can stay here. Please don’t try to make too much of a mess,” Sasori had said when he deposited Kakuzu and Deidara in his hotel suite across a scenic courtyard from the Cairo Museum of Egyptology. “I don’t want to have to pay a deposit for room damages.” And then with exceptional English composure he’d put on a fresh linen morning coat and gone off to try to find out how to undo the curse of the Book of the Dead.

“Should one of us go with him?” Deidara asked as they watched him cross the courtyard from their window. Kakuzu grumbled and shook his head. In the storm of vendors hastily packing up in the shadow of the storm he saw a now familiar spiky ponytail cross towards the hotel. Ah, there he was….

“He can fend for himself for now. You-“ he clapped Deidara on the back. “-go distract our American friend down there. Keep him inside and around people, and come get me if you see any... sand… acting up.” What Kakuzu would do in that case he didn’t know, but people generally seemed to like being Told What to Do in Times of Crisis. “…You still have my wallet, don’t you?”

Deidara smiled sheepishly. “Well, you didn’t look like you were too concerned about it, hn.”

“Drinks on me, then. If you need to get him plastered to keep him safe then so be it.”

“What are you going to do up here?”

Kakuzu shrugged, then motioned to the pile of rifles, pistols, knives and an 18th century blunderbuss sitting on the bedside table. “My best, I suppose.”

“Good man, hn. If you die, I’ll make sure the stories about you are very complimentary.”

“If I die, there won’t be anybody alive to tell stories to.”

“I’ll make you out to be a lot more charming and optimistic than you really are.”

“Hm.” Kakuzu grunted and made himself comfortable on Sasori’s bed as Deidara swept out of the lushly decorated hotel room, after wrapping the canopic jar up in his coat and rolling it under the bed.

And now the wait began.

Kakuzu rubbed a hand across his face. He was suddenly immensely tired. It’d been less than a day since he started down the dark, narrow passage into the mazelike temple of Jashin, since he’d been forced to confront the probable existence of things like curses and resurrection and _gods_ , and since he’d nearly gotten off from an aggressive kiss and some hasty rubbing.

Now he finally had a chance to think. About _that_.

The only way that he could justify it to himself was that it’d genuinely been that long since he’d gotten that close with anyone and he’d lost his head for a moment, but that was a pathetic admission. He wouldn’t be the first man to be hypnotized by a pretty face – the taste of blood in his mouth – but he still couldn’t believe how he’d just let himself get taken in hand.

“Hallucinogenic gas,” he told himself.

A night’s sleep would probably help, but he couldn’t let himself drift off, not when so much was at stake. He’d get a second chance to try to finish Hidan off like he should have – if he could.

He reached over to the bedside table, knocking guns aside to pick up the flask that he kept on his ammo belt. He unscrewed the top and took a sip. The first draw was whiskey. The second was thick, warm and metallic, and Kakuzu spat it back out into the flask, shocked. When he touched his lips his fingers came back dark and dripping with blood. What in the… he looked up.

The room was ominously still, including the man standing at the foot of the four-poster bed, almost obscured by the gauzy drapery and illuminated by the soft electric lamps behind him. It was a fitting scene for Hidan, glinting with gold bracelets and a gilded robe. Sumptuous.

“It looks like you’ve stolen my heart after all, Ka-kuzu.”

“You speak English now.”

“Everything is possible through our Lord Jashin,” Hidan said huskily, opening his palms in supplication. “Maybe if you’d stayed around to hear about him you’d know that.”

“I’ve heard enough about your god,” Kakuzu said, hiding the icy clench of fear in his stomach. Had Hidan already found the others? Was he the last bastion of humanity? How could he buy a little more time for Sasori – and would that end up being of any use? “I’d rather hear about you.”

“Heathen.” Affectionate. Kakuzu didn’t make a move for the weapons by his bedside table. He could play this to his advantage. He might be 3000 years old, technically, but Hidan must have barely been grown when he’d ‘died’, he was all vicious energy and no sense. It was sweet, in a way, and equally concerning that the fate of the world hung on his adolescent whims.

“You wouldn’t want to kill another believer, would you? Or do you all enjoy the stabbing and sacrifices?”

Hidan parted the curtains and settled a knee on the creamy comforter. “Pain and pleasure are more or less the same thing… it’s a shame that you all seem to have forgotten that. Nothing adds an edge to fucking like some broken bones, yeah? A little stabbing?”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Come on, you seem like you know how to hurt someone good,” Hidan teased, slipping up to straddle Kakuzu. “You know you can’t kill me. Nothing hurts me for more than a few moments. And Jashin can do that for you, too… he promised that when I came back to execute his will he’d have a perfect mate for me to rule his world with. I wake up, and who's the first person I meet?”

“I didn’t show up because any death god told me to, I got paid to take a job.” Kakuzu’s hands moved up to his well-muscled waist, just above the gold belt of his schenti. His heart was drumming in his ears; the same fugue-like state of desire that Hidan always seemed to have on him was descending over him. Distract him – yes, yes, Kakuzu could do that. For once it seemed like his skill set and desires were perfectly matched to his mission.

“And you took it, even though you _knew_ it meant certain death. Those nightmares? That constant watching? Come on, you were into it.” Hidan grinned down at him. “Jashin’s told me all about you, all the fuckers who’ve screwed you over, all the times when you wanted to beat someone down but couldn’t… nobody’s going to try to start shit with you when you’re with me. C’mon, Kakuzu, let’s start some shit together…”

His hands were on Kakuzu’s chest now, having gotten the hang of buttons enough to clumsily undo the first few, slip in and fondle. Kakuzu leaned his head back, pretending-not-pretending to consider Hidan’s words. It was hard to think, pillowed between the adrenaline and the smell of perfume and musky skin. His cock was demanding his brain’s allotment of blood and it was so easy to slip a hand down to teasingly rub Hidan under the pleated cloth. The young man moaned appreciatively, leaning into Kakuzu’s shoulder to pant in his ear.

“Yeah.. that’s it.. c’mon, old man, I know you can get rougher..”

“Shut up,” Kakuzu murmured, rucking up the schenti and taking Hidan’s hardening cock in his hand. Hidan gasped and hissed in pleasure as Kakuzu gave him a long stroke – too dry for it to be comfortable, surely – but then again, he seemed like he enjoyed a bit of discomfort. He flicked his thumb over his precum-moist glans and relished Hidan’s pleased squirming.

His other hand he threaded through the hair at the base of Hidan’s neck, pulling his head back sharply to yank him into a toothy kiss. Hidan returned it with equal energy, nipping at Kakuzu’s lower lip, reaching up to grab at his stubbly jaw and force it open. This boy really needed a lesson in kissing, Kakuzu thought, privately amused by the clumsiness of it – it was flattering, really, that he was so riled up by him that he’d abandoned his Mystical Priestly pretension and reverted to licking.

Giving Hidan one last rough stroke he unbuttoned his own trousers. Hidan was trying to get off his shirt again with frenzied excitement, pulling back to let Kakuzu pull it off and toss it aside to the floor to join his mask and hood.

Just as he suspected, when he rolled them over and ducked down to take Hidan’s heavy pink erection into his mouth, the man went completely to pieces.

“Fuck! Kakuzu – ah - “ he looped a leg over his shoulder. Kakuzu got a grip on his hips to keep from getting choked, taking him as deep into his throat as he could, slowly pulling off with the barest scrape of teeth and then swallowing him back down again. He loved the feeling of Hidan writhing underneath him, at his mercy, tensed and coiled under his hands and lips, and he found himself thrusting against the coverlet in time with him. The sharp urge to gag and the smell of skin and sweat, the power that he felt holding someone's pleasure for ransom...

If Hidan was going to get off, he was, too. He let go with a lurid pop to spit on his hand.

He looked up, meeting Hidan’s dark eager eyes, looking for approval and being met with a “get the fuck on with it, then!”

Kakuzu slapped the inside of his thigh. “Patience.”

He took Hidan’s erection back into his mouth, swirling his tongue over the sensitive glans and humming, and reaching back between Hidan's legs to run his spit-slick fingers over his hole. He moaned, canting his hips forward to let Kakuzu get one finger inside, massaging the spasming ring of muscle until it was loose enough for a second to scissor in beside it. A crook of his fingers at the right angle – there, that was the solid little gland that made Hidan keen and curse. He rubbed at it mercilessly as he stretched him open.

“Jashin, father of all, I’m _ready_ , just _fuck_ me already-“ Hidan commanded, digging a heel into Kakuzu’s back.

“Not if you keep talking about Jashin,” Kakuzu said darkly as he disentangled himself and unlatched Hidan’s ornamental belt. “My name should be the only one in your mouth now. Understand?”

Hidan stared up at him, flushed and proud-looking, and shot him a bold smirk. “If you want me to forget my _god’s_ name, then make me.”

Since he was so kindly invited to do so, Kakuzu grabbed him by the hips, dragging him closer and then flipping him over onto his elbows and knees. Hidan put up the token of a struggle before Kakuzu pressed an authoritative hand between his shoulderblades.

Hidan looked at him from over his shoulder with a daring quirk of an eyebrow. Kakuzu had a realization and cast about for a second before grabbing the overturned flask of blood at the head of the bed. It felt beyond perverse to pour a handful and give himself a few jerks, but Hidan cackled with glee when he saw it. Grabbing Hidan’s beautifully toned ass – leaving vivid scarlet handprints - Kakuzu slid the length of his cock against it a few times, indulging in the slickness and warmth and Hidan’s irritated insults before pushing in.

They both groaned, Hidan arching up like a cat against him. “Fuck – Kakuzu, fuck, you’re fucking _huge_ – yes -“ his voice’d jumped up an octave, and he buried his face in the bed beneath him and hollered when Kakuzu thrust all the way in. God, the tight warmth was absolutely maddeningly good – the flutter of Hidan's muscles and the way he could see his ribs heaving in the buttery lamplight – even the metallic smell of blood made him harder, burn hotter. He got a better and less slippery hold on the arc of Hidan’s hipbones and started thrusting with a brutal pace. Hidan’d braced himself on the headboard, wood starting to crack from the strength of his grip, meeting him thrust for thrust. He experimented with close, sharp thrusts, and then with pulling almost all the way out before slowly pressing deep in. It all felt dizzyingly good.

This had to be painful for Hidan – with such hasty preparation and the absolute worst lubrication – but then again, he said pain and pleasure were equal at his altar, and Kakuzu would do just about anything right now for the maddening pleasure he was chasing. But it did give him an idea.

After a minute he pulled Hidan up to his knees, pressed against Kakuzu’s front, rolling a few deep thrusts into him at a different angle and sliding his hand up to wrap around his neck.

Hidan’s head fell back against Kakuzu’s shoulder. “ _Fuck_ yes,” he gasped, his voice thick with spit and pleasure. He looked as completely wrecked as Kakuzu felt, mouth open and eyes rolled back, and he gave in to the urge to kiss him even as he clamped his fingers down on his neck. They’d both lost the plot of a kiss, just pressing their mouths together and gasping while they both chased their high. Kakuzu could hear him choking out words in ancient Egyptian, words he didn’t recognize – and no mention of Jashin.

“Going to put that mouth to better use,” Kakuzu hissed. “You think you want to be in charge, don’t you, but what you really want-“ he punctuated with another thrust “-is to be put in your place, isn't it?”

Hidan wheezed out a laugh and gasped. He was frantically pumping his own cock to the time of Kakuzu’s thrusts, he could hear it in tandem with the lurid slap of skin on skin, and without warning Hidan arched back against him and cried out, tightening almost painfully around Kakuzu’s cock, coming. Kakuzu fucked him through his orgasm, loosening his grip on his neck just enough to let him recover, before pulling out and flipping the man onto his back on the bed.

Hidan looked up at him, panting, flushed down to his cum and blood-smeared chest, then looked down appreciatively at Kakuzu’s erection.

“Can I thank Jashin just once?”

Kakuzu sighed.

“ _Thank you,_ Lord Jashin.”

“For god’s sake. Can you still go?”

Hidan licked his lips and reached out to hook a heel behind Kakuzu’s back and pull him over. That was a yes, then. He added another slosh of blood from his flask – absolutely none of these bedclothes were going to be salvageable – and pushed back inside him with a groan of pleasure. Hidan pulled him down to him and wrapped his legs around his waist, clinging close now. All sweaty and oversensitive, tight and wet, fingernails digging into his shoulders, a psalm of adoring “yes, ah, fuck, there, yes, Kakuzu,” the stench and viscosity of blood and sweat, and in no time at all Kakuzu buried his face in Hidan’s shoulder and came harder than he remembered ever having done so.

He rode out the scorching wave of pleasure with a few slow, deep, thrusts, emptying deep inside of him, and then stilled. Lying against Hidan’s chest he could hear the rasp of his lungs and the hollowness where he’d expected a heartbeat. Somehow he was still warm, though, and the unexpectedly tender hand carding through his hair felt rather nice, so Kakuzu stayed where he was. He rather liked the sense of propriety he felt still being inside Hidan even as he softened and the priest seemed too enervated to complain.

A few moments of silence, and then Hidan groaned. “Fu-huck, you had to go and break my back like that before I make my big ritual?”

Kakuzu grunted. “How is this worth complaining about, you stabbed yourself in the stomach.”

“Yeah, so did you, I swear to god I could feel your dick in my esophagus.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“That’s rich coming from you, you used blood as lubricant!”

“Oh, you owe me a flask of Macallan, too. I assume that was you that turned it into blood.”

“Yeah, that happens. You know, the plagues and shit. It’s part of the presentation.” Hidan sighed, wiggling his fingers. “I dunno. I could do without all the natural disasters. I’m just excited to get back to the part that really matters.”

Kakuzu exhaled heavily and pulled out with a grimace. The fluids that’d seemed so sexy just a few minutes ago were getting tacky and disgusting in the warm evening air, but there was nothing that he could do about that right now. If he left Hidan might start looking around for the canopic jar under the bed. “Rampant bloodshed and human sacrifice?”

“Yeah!” Hidan said, still looking indulgently exhausted. “That’s the really profound part of worship. Something beautiful shared between two people.”

“Why does it matter so much that you do it now?” Kakuzu asked, lying down next to Hidan so he could pull him up on his shoulder. “It’s been 3,000 years. A few more couldn’t hurt, could it?”

“ _How_ long has it been?” Hidan asked suddenly, bolting up, eyes wide. “Fuck! Oh Jashin you did break my back!” he hissed, hand going to the base of his spine. Kakuzu snorted.

“That’s what you get for rushing me. I could have stretched you out properly, but…”

“Patience, patience, I know, I know,” Hidan pouted, then he looked a little lost. “It’s seriously been 3,000 years? I was supposed to come back right away and destroy the cult of Amon the sun god… slaughter the heathenous pharaoh that tried to extinguish Jashin’s flame… why didn’t I get woken up? What did I do wrong?”

“Something must have gotten lost in translation.” He reached out and pulled Hidan back down against him, feeling somehow protective. Hidan let him.

“Everything I know is gone, then,” he murmured into Kakuzu’s neck.

“… I’m sorry.”

“I should be used to this by now.” Hidan idly picked dried blood out of Kakuzu’s chest hair. “Whole village was killed by the Sea People when I was a baby – I was the only one that survived and they shipped me off to Hamunaptra to worship Jashin because I was obviously cursed.”

Kakuzu snorted. “If you weren’t then, you certainly are now.”

“Yeah, they really screwed themselves over then, didn’t they?” Hidan giggled. “I’d like to have seen their faces when I showed up at the palace to scythe ‘em down like wheat.”

Kakuzu adjusted himself so he could look at him. Now that they’d fucked like madmen he thought he’d be more clear-headed about things, but instead he found himself even more endeared to Hidan, no longer a specter but a flesh-and-blood lover with a maniacal sadistic streak and a bit of ambivalence about his position in Jashin’s cosmic plan. Here was a young man that could be reasoned with, swayed, adored into complacency, spoiled by a lack of guidance and discipline that Kakuzu could provide. Someone who let Kakuzu indulge his violent temper and would heal in moments; and let him lavish his attention and authority on afterward. A dedication that would never waver.

He was suddenly struck with a bolt of longing so strong it was almost physical - this closeness, this possession. Jashin had sent him to Hidan; Hidan would never betray his god by betraying Kakuzu. He would be _his_.

He leaned his head down and kissed him.

And neither of them heard the shuffling outside that preceded the rest of the expedition team’s arrival.

The door slammed open. Hidan yelled. Sasori, covered in a net of ancient necklaces and charms, yelled back. Deidara and Tobi, behind him, screamed.

“HERU ISTHA A’ EM HESET NET AMON!” Sasori yelled with impressive force and intensity, brandishing an ankh from one of his necklaces.

"Wait!" Kakuzu started, grabbing Hidan's arm.

Hidan took a hissing breath from between clenched teeth – and, his hand clutching Kakuzu’s – he once again dissolved into a wild twirling storm of white sand that sluiced through the room, overturning furniture and hurling itself out the window into the blackened world.

Kakuzu pulled the bloody coverlet up to his waist. A piece of paper from the desk by the window fluttered to the floor. Sasori’s necklaces, no doubt ‘borrowed’ from the museum, gently clinked.

“What,” Deidara asked. “The _hell_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya fucked a mummy.
> 
> Hidan's not dead, he just got temporarily banished by Sasori's incredible array of gaudy antique holy relics.
> 
> For some cool art, check out: https://lilac-bramble.tumblr.com/tagged/the-mummy-au (thanks lilac!!!!)


	4. Chapter 4

“We have more pressing issues at hand right now.”

“Yeah, obviously, but we can’t set those to right until we sort out what _you’ve_ been doing, hn.”

“And what you’ve done to my room. God in heaven, all this blood… I’m never getting invited back to teach here..”

“Well! You two really had a lot of fun here while we were all out on the town. And you didn’t invite Tobi!”

“Tobi, get out of here. Let me put some pants on, at least.”

“No,” Sasori said flatly. “You’ve forfeited any rights that you had to dignity when you – when you- you-…“

“Underpetticoated a mummy?” Deidara suggested.

“Zig-zigged?” Tobi added.

“Sunk your meat into?”

“Snizzled?”

“ _That’s_ not a real word.”

“It is! It is! It’s American!”

Kakuzu, dressed in nothing but a crinkly bloodstained sheet pulled up to his chest, resisted the urge to start throwing punches. He could definitely take the rest of the people in the room out if he had to – Sasori was sitting at the foot of the bed in a luxurious wingback armchair looking as furious as a ten-year-old-looking middle aged man could look. Deidara and Tobi were flanking him. Deidara was doing his level best to look serious and cross – Tobi was as illegibly energetic as always.

“Yes, fine, I slept with the – if we’re calling him a mummy, alright, he wasn’t actually mummified – he’s an immortal priest with the power to turn the whole city upside down and he guts people like it’s his job. Which it is. I tried to kill him before and it didn’t work, so this was my best chance to buy you enough time to figure out how to actually put him out. Did you at least find anything useful enough to make up for _this?_ ” Kakuzu growled to Sasori, gesturing to the ruined bedclothes and the cracked headboard.

“Hey, don’t you try to change the subject!” Deidara said indignantly. “This is about you sleeping with the enemy!”

Sasori pursed his lips, unwilling to concede that Kakuzu had a tablespoon of a point. “… Yes. I did.” He perked up as he remembered what he’d come for. “The tablet that mentions the Book of the Dead at Hamunaptra said that there was a set of twin texts, complimentary ones – one with spells that brought life back and one that could destroy it. And then I think, from my interpretations of it – it’s all very metaphorical, of course – that the other book must be in Hamunaptra, too. A Book of Life. It might be able to reverse this apocalypse.”

Deidara rested his fingers on his forehead in resigned frustration, and Kakuzu wanted to do the same.

“So we’re going back there now, hn?”

“Oooh, you should, it’ll be fun, Deidara!” Tobi leaned over the bed. “This time we’ll be going together as partners… it’ll be a vacation!”

“It’s just a theory,” Sasori clarified. “I don’t know where it is in Hamunaptra. It could be anywhere and take years to find. I’d need a few more days of research at least to cross-reference-“

“We don’t have a few days!” Kakuzu interjected furiously. He’d love to get dressed, maybe scrub down, but he had just enough decency to feel awkward about getting out of bed naked. For Sasori’s sake, at least, he’d probably have an aneurysm. “This may be our only chance. As long as we have one of the jars we’ve got time. Hamunaptra is the last place he’ll think to look for us, but Hidan will find us eventually.”

A distant crack of thunder; they all looked out the window. Pitch black.

There was too much to include, too much to think about. Jashin had somehow gotten into his mind before and Kakuzu didn’t know how much of that malevolent force was still inside him, a signal flare for Hidan to follow. He didn’t know if he would slip into that same half-dreaming state of reverie when Hidan did catch up to them, or if he would be able to resist his strange and erratic temptation. The only thing that he knew – and that even dubiously – was that they needed to end this nascent so-called apocalypse while they still could.

“Alright, so… great plan, how are we going to get there?” Deidara asked reluctantly. “It’s sort of a whole storm situation going on out there right now. If you didn’t notice. Too busy mummy-cuddling.”

“We’ll go on horse,” Kakuzu said. “Just Sasori and I, you two should stay here. You’ll just slow us down otherwise.”

“Hn, thanks, Kakuzu.”

“I’d leave Sasori behind if I had a choice, but he’s the only one who might know where the Book of Life is.”

Sasori’d gotten up and found Kakuzu’s pants, tossing them on the bed with two fingers and an air of great disdain. “It’ll take over a day to get there.”

“You have a better suggestion, _Mr. Akasuna_?”

“I do!”

The party looked over.

Deidara pointed at Tobi. “Is he one of us? Does he need to be here?”

“I can hotwire one of the Americans’ planes, they’re at the Cairo airstrip just down the road! Then it’s only a hop to Hamunaptra!”

Kakuzu and Sasori looked at each other. Sasori raised his eyebrows. Tobi did mention something about learning how to trick fly at a circus in the States, but Kakuzu had always assumed that he was joking – there’d been a one-eyed pirate stuntman and a three-breasted acrobat involved in that story, too. For all of his, well, his everything, Tobi could be deviously useful… that was what made him so damnedly frustrating to work with.

“You can fly in this?” Kakuzu asked, tipping his head toward the window.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Tobi assured him, flapping his hands, eyes crinkling from behind his garish orange face scarf. “It’ll be just like during the war!”

“Wait, you fought in the _war?!?_ ”

“Come on, last one to the plane is a rotten egg!” Tobi hollered, vaulting over the bed and Kakuzu’s legs and shooting out the door of Sasori’s room. Deidara looked at them, shook his head and jogged after him.

Kakuzu looked at Sasori, who was once again looking out the window with a look of dazed concern.

“Mr. Akasuna, if you would.” He gestured down at his sheet-covered lap and his pair of pants. “Unless you want me to fight this mummy nude.”

Sasori shook his head. “This is ridiculous…”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m putting my life in _Tobi’s_ hands?!”

“In a stolen plane, in a storm, to fight a god.”

Kakuzu wiggled on his trousers under the sheet. “Well. If it works, you’ll have one hell of a paper to write. And you’re leaving _this_ out of it.”

* * *

“YOU TOLD ME YOU COULD FLY IN THIS THING,” Kakuzu roared above competing shriek of the biplane’s engine. He was barely clinging on to the wing as it veered to and fro through the chokingly thick cloud cover over the desert. A hard bank towards his side nearly sent him skidding off of the canvas, but he managed to keep a hold on the mounted gun by the open-top cabin.

“You’re just so much denser than Deidara!” Tobi called out, barely intelligible through the din. Kakuzu spared a second to think about Deidara, hanging on to the wing on the other side… if Kakuzu was having trouble….

At least he’d gotten a pair of goggles from the cockpit to keep his eyes clear. They burst above the clouds, trailing mist from the wings, breaching over a sea of clouds lit brightly by the moon. If it weren’t for the fact that he was hanging off a plane piloted by a madman Kakuzu might have taken a moment to enjoy the view.

Sasori, in full aviator gear, wriggled around from his awkward demi-seat folded behind Tobi. He looked to the back of the plane, then reached out to get Kakuzu’s attention and pointed.

Kakuzu looked over his shoulder. He hissed air through his teeth.

“We’ve got trouble!” He yelled in agreement and slapped at the cockpit to get Tobi’s attention.

Behind them, a bubble of clouds had grown into an enormous cumulonimbus tidal wave behind them, blotting out the stars behind them. Kakuzu could barely see the top of it as it grew, pitch-black and ominous, flashing dully with spider angiomatas of lightning. Tobi must have gunned the engine because the plane lurched forward, dropping down and then swooping back up as the rudders caught, the little eddies of clouds whipping past just under the wheels.

Other than the noises of machinery, there was a dark and layered whispering rippling over them. Along with the jarring motion of the plane Kakuzu shivered, feeling that strange sense of being watched again. They’d been found. Had he doomed the other three by taking them along? Had he taken the curse of Hamunaptra with him?

The clouds seemed to congeal, massing into what looked like an enormous skull. Its behemoth jaw unhinged as it kept pace with them, hunting them down.

“TOBI! FASTER!” Kakuzu yelled. The plane was starting to rattle and thump and Kakuzu could barely keep his grip. Wrenching his head back again to look he saw that the sky was completely obliterated, just a black wave of the ghostly skull’s maw bearing down on them.

A flash of motion got Kakuzu’s attention. Tobi waggled his fingers at him from the cockpit then pointed down, and Kakuzu barely had time to tighten his grip before the plane slammed down into a nosedive, plunging through the cloudcover as giant ghostly teeth snapped closed where they would have been.

Kakuzu must have screamed, but the force pressing against him whipped his breath out of his mouth. He screwed his eyes shut as they plowed through warm, wet, shrieking, sandy air, a hellacious, oppressive furnace, so fast and hard that he knew for sure that they’d be obliterated on the sand below.

Tobi banked up, hard, and the skeleton of the plane itself shrieked and groaned in complaint. A tearing crunch – that was probably the tail rudder – and they were all spinning sickeningly, faster, a whirl of blacks and metal grey and red and then a bone-grinding impact and a wave of shrapnel-sharp grit.

Kakuzu was thrown from the wing of the plane and hit the sand, rolling on impact like he’d been taught to do in the army. The world spun and rang deafeningly for a few moments, for however long he’d been lying there with every orifice filled with sand – when all this was done he would rob Sasori at gunpoint and take a nice vacation to a scenic inland lake with no sand for a hundred miles.

“… Nng,” he tried. Alright, that’s a start, Taki. He took a deep breath, feeling a twinge of soreness but no signs of a punctured lung. He balled his fists and relaxed them. No pain. He felt his arms, groped at his chest, wiggled his toes and legs. He’d have an awful bruise on his side where his pistol had gotten imprinted into his ribs, but everything seemed to be in working order…

He couldn’t decide if closing his eyes made him more or less dizzy so he sat up instead, sand sluicing from his body as he rose.

“Sa-ugh-“ he coughed. “Sasori? Deidara?”

“Kakuzu,” Tobi whined. “I don’t wanna do that again.”

Looking around Kakuzu saw that they’d plowed into the side of a sandbank, the half-submerged plane torn through the tail during its rough handling. Its back propellor was still slowly spinning.

Kakuzu got up, stumbling to his feet and sinking in the sand, still dizzy. He lurched over to the body of the plane and reached into the cockpit for Sasori, who reached up to him, eyes wide and glassy and the side of his head blackened with blood.

“You’re fine,” Kakuzu assured him as he pulled him out. He wasn’t sure if he actually was - he looked utterly shell-shocked. “Let me find Deidara and we’ll figure out what to do.”

“There it is,” Sasori said darkly, looking off over his shoulder. “Of course, like it’s been gift-wrapped.”

Kakuzu turned and squinted. In the deep blue-black light, there was the familiar profile of tall cliffs, and perhaps a half-mile away, the silent pillars of Hamunaptra. Deep within them, there were flickers of light burning. The welcome torches had been lit for them.

Kakuzu swallowed.

“Oi, get your hands off me, you freak! What’d you – you call that flying, hn? I’ll show you flying! When I slap you so hard you go airborn!”

Ah, there he was. Tobi emerged from the other side of the plane’s carcass with Deidara draped around his back, limping and cursing profusely.

“Sasori! You wouldn’t fucking believe the time Kakuzu and I had up there for _your_ research paper! You’d better appreciate it, hn! Sasori? Hey, Sasori-”

Deidara wrenched himself from under Tobi’s arm and grabbed Sasori’s shoulders, nearly falling over a buckled right leg. “Are you okay? Oh, no, not your head, we’ve got to keep that safe, that’s the money-maker, isn’t it..” he pressed a hand to the mat of blood by the professor’s ear. It was a nasty looking scrape, Kakuzu could see now, and he’d probably been concussed. Deidara didn’t look so good either – he couldn’t put any weight on his leg.

He looked towards Hamunaptra. Would they all get there in time?

“The Book of Life,” Sasori murmured.

“What?” Deidara asked. Sasori looked up at Kakuzu, still dazed. “It’s under the, uh – the other statue, I think. I had a chance to think about it in there, with all the spinning. The Bainbridge scholars really didn’t know what they were talking about.”

“Sas, my man, we don’t know what _you’re_ talking about.”

“Shh,” Sasori chided. “I was thinking about the language used to describe the.. ah… the other book, which was framed as a sort of parallel, that is to say, an equal counterpart to the Book of Life, where if the first one was under the statue of Anubis, the keeper of the gates of the underworld, then it should be under…”

“Amun?” Kakuzu guessed.

“Horus,” Sasori corrected.

“That was going to be my guess,” Deidara said.

A god of creation would make more sense, Kakuzu thought to himself, but Sasori seemed concussedly set on his interpretation even as he swayed in Deidara’s arms. The Book of Death had been found with Hidan’s canopic organs under a statue of Anubis and he didn’t remember a statue of Horus, or any other god, for that matter, nearby. Maybe it’d been toppled like so much of the rest of Hamunaptra, in which case he just had to find a pair of feet and start digging.

“Alright, I don’t think you two are going anywhere like this,” Kakuzu announced in a tone that brooked no opposition. “Tobi, you see if you can get that plane radio working and get help for yourselves. If you don’t hear from me by sunrise…” he looked out into the blackness towards Hamunaptra. “Then there’s probably no point in it anyway.”

“Hey! You can’t just go on without us, hn!” Deidara cried. “You’re – well, you’re our – our guide!”

“What, you want your money back? You already have my wallet.”

“You can’t just leave us with Tobi, though! I’d prefer to be off fighting an ancient scary mummy curse. Sasori’d never forgive me if I didn’t get notes on it!”

“You’re not going anywhere on that leg. Besides,” Kakuzu clapped Deidara on the shoulder. “The professor needs you. So buck up for his sake, you’ve done enough already.” Sasori, from where he was clinging dearly to Deidara, nodded complacently.

Deidara sighed, gathered a resolute face and nodding. “Fine, for Sas. But you’d better get it done proper-like, hn? Don’t fuck about with that mummy priest and let the world get blown up just because we’re not around to make you keep it in your trousers.”

“I-shut up,“ Kakuzu started, offended, but realized that he didn’t really have a leg to stand on either. Deidara was, unfortunately, right. “I’ll be back by the morning. Un-fucked and still alive.”

With a final tools check and a firm warning finger-point to Tobi he was off again, starting through the black cool desert towards the distant fires of the city of the dead.

* * *

One canopic jar under the bed in Sasori’s room, which was now also filled with ancient Egyptian warding amulets. Two with miscellaneous Americans that may or may not still be alive, one with Shikamaru Nara. As long as one of them stayed out of Hidan’s hands he had time. He _had_ to believe that he had time.

Horus, Horus, statue of Horus, he thought as he swung his sputtering torch through the wind-raked ruins of Hamunaptra, climbing over ancient shattered edifices. The whole world was filtered through a blue-black haze that bit at the edges of his yellow torch-light. What time was it? Was it morning yet? Would he be able to tell if it was? He swung his torch out over a pair of trunkless legs of stone, the body lost at the knees – but the long gown-hem suggested a female statue. Not Horus, then.

There was nothing else for it. The statue of Anubis stood in front of the mouth of the tomb, half-destroyed, like it was mockingly inviting him back down.

He shivered. He remembered the first time he was here, in bright daylight, when the sands in the temple complex dragged a handful of men to their deaths right before his eyes. Now they were still and dark. And – his eyes traced the swell of one of the broken pillars – there was someone standing on top of it, barely illuminated by the weak torches. His heart leapt into his throat. Hidan..?

“Taki,” Shikamaru called, sliding down the toppled pillar and hopping down to the sand below, jogging up to him. His sidebag slapped at his hip and Kakuzu saw the jackal head of a canopic jar sticking out of it. Clever boy - at least one of them was accounted for. “I should’ve known you’d be here.”

“How did you get here?” Kakuzu frowned.

“I took the plane you _didn’t_ steal. Thanks for that, by the way.”

That’s what he got for hiring Tobi, he thought. “What are you here for?”

Shikamaru eyed him warily. “What are _you_ here for?”

“The same thing as you, I reckon.” He said cagily and gestured towards the blackened sky. “Finding out how to fix all of this.” Like hell he’d tell this kid about-

“The Book of Life, right?” Oh, hell. “That blond pickpocket was talking about it at the bar. I figured it had to be back here somewhere.”

“... Alright. We’ll find the Book faster if we’re both looking for it. There should be a statue of Horus somewhere down there. There’s a sacrificial alter that –“

“Just get on with it. You go first, there’s no way I’m trusting you at my back down there.”

Kakuzu huffed through his nose and shook his head as he turned to go in. The impudence. “I can’t say I trust you any more.”

Before they got to the opening of the tomb, though, Kakuzu was seized by the sensation of being watched and he stopped in his tracks. A sluice of cold sweat ran down his back and the light from their torches seemed to constrict, casting Shikamaru’s sharp, concerned face in a terrifying orange mask. Something else was here with them.

How many people was Jashin’s fixation on him going to put in peril?

“Nara.” He said slowly. “You go.”

“No, you go first. I’m not letting you box me in.”

He looked down and saw the sand below them start to move as if it was blown by an unfelt wind, slithering and twirling. “I don’t think that you want me to come with you. You’ll be safer on your own.”

“I’m not letting you-“ Shikamaru didn’t get to finish, and the sand between then erupted upwards, an enormous skeletal sand hand lunging out towards him. Shikamaru yelled, fumbling for the torch and then sprinting into the tomb just out of reach of the sandy claws snapping at his heels. It dissolved back into a carpet of fine sand as it slapped the sandstone floor.

Kakuzu leapt back, climbing up a broken pillar to get the high ground. He hoped that he’d told Shikamaru what he needed to know about how to find the Book – maybe he’d follow him in a few minutes to make sure that he got to it, maybe…

The sand was retreating like a wave, and then it started to lazily swirl again, whipping into a spire, growing and gasping like a living creature, then forming solid limbs. A broad chest, proudly squared jaw, the glint of ritual jewelry, and Hidan was standing in front of him, looking up with a lively smirk.

“You’re a glutton for punishment, coming back here after all that.”

“You’re just following me around now, aren’t you.”

Hidan shrugged. “You always seem to show up with whatever it is that I want. Jashin sees to the rest.”

Kakuzu slid down the pillar and hopped down, approaching the priest warily. “Have you been here this whole time?”

“Yeah, I got back as soon as I found my liver hiding under your bed – you thought those dinky little old dynasty charms’d keep me out of there? Oh, and how’d you like meeting Jashin out there in that flying boat of yours? Pretty awesome, huh?”

Kakuzu pressed two fingers between his eyes. His head hurt. “I assume that shooting you again and taking your organs out won’t work,” he growled. It was a shoddy plan, but he’d hoped that it would buy them more time.

“Nuh-uh. You can still try, though. And speaking of, where’s that little bastard that’s carrying around my heart? You know I can’t raise Jashin without it.”

“Well then. Why don’t you just find him yourself and rain down your godly wrath on him and get it back?”

Hidan crossed his arms. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“No? You’ve got to do a little dance for it? Ask Jashin nicely?”

“Take his name from your mouth, heathen. And for your information, no, it doesn’t _work like that_. You can’t just abuse Jashin’s gifts” – Kakuzu snorted- “especially when some punk’s got your most sacred organ. And when he gets the.. the…” he trailed off, looking away.

“The Book of Life? He can kill you with it, right?” he finished for Hidan. Hidan huffed, looking up, not wanting to admit that he was right. Of course – nothing bad could ever happen to him, ever, he was immortal and young and blessed by an invincible curse. Except for one golden cookbook sized exception…

“You think you know everything, eh, old man?”

“I usually do. That book’s what we came here to find.” Except for anything going on right now – where Shikamaru was, whether or not he was, at this moment, sounding out the words to the spell that would preclude the Apocalypse. Hidan would probably die, a puppet with his magical strings cut, dissolve back into chalky dust or a blackened corpse. It was a small price to pay – maybe Kakuzu could honor his memory by strangling Shikamaru and selling his golden book on the black market. No, that’s what Kakuzu would like to have done; Hidan would want Shikamaru drawn, quartered and sacrificed on an altar, at the very least.

Hidan looked back at him, brows furrowed, petulant and a little hurt. “So you’re gonna let him kill me then? That’s it?”

“You’re not really alive right now, are you.” Kakuzu said. “I’m not going to let the world get destroyed. You’re not going to leave well enough alone if we don’t stop you. I really can’t compromise on this.”

“What did the world ever do for you, huh? What do you owe it?” Hidan shot back. “Those bastards never treated you right. You’ve just been disappointed and betrayed over and over again and you just fucking took it! I’ve seen it, Jashin’s showed me! And now you’ve got a chance to get them back for it. And-“ he raised his hand and passed it down Kakuzu’s face even as he drew back “- you’ll have me there for it too. I won’t pull that shit on you, Ka-kuzu, you’ve got to know that. You’re all I’ve got here.”

He placed a cool hand on Kakuzu’s face, an untrained attempt at tenderness, and he couldn’t resist turning toward it to brush his lips against the base of his ringed thumb. Hidan didn’t sound like he was begging for his life, more like he was disappointed that Kakuzu wouldn’t come to a party with him. Of course, if pain and death were pleasurable and relative, why worry? There was something that Kakuzu envied in how little Hidan cared for his own survival. He himself cared so much – his every thought was aimed at how to make more money, secure his safety, harden himself to the point where nobody could hurt him again.

Hidan didn’t seem to care if he got hurt, though, and it was equally refreshing and frustrating to see how cheaply he estimated his immortality. He was every cocky, swaggering, impulsive, sensitive thing that Kakuzu had denied himself.

There were still things worth protecting in the world, though. There had to be. As much as he hated to admit it, there were things he didn’t want to live without – sitting in front of a busy coffee shop in Istanbul in the warm afternoon sun. A good deal on an antique book and an early morning to read it in. Washing his hair after a hard desert trip, rubbing his fingers down to his scalp in the warm clean water. Moving pictures. Fried liver and onions. Jashin wouldn’t let him keep all of that, would he? The god of death and sacrifice would probably want him to sacrifice his earthly attachments. At least he’d get to keep Hidan, for all that he meant to him after a handful of meetings.

“… I’ll make you an offer.”

Hidan opened his mouth to argue. Kakuzu shut him up with his own, a quick, surprised kiss. How well they fit together already.

“Listen, for once. I – won’t let you die. But you can’t destroy the world, either. You can either live in this… damned… peopled hellhole like the rest of us or die for good. Alright?” He’d started out terse, but he’d let himself drift sentimentally by the end and he found himself earnestly holding Hidan close. “And I’m not going to let Shikamaru Nara kill you. Your reputation would never recover.”

Hidan punched him in the shoulder. “Old asshole,” he whined, but he was smiling a little.

From the yawning black vestibule of the tomb, a low rumble started. The air suddenly felt a little heavier than it had, as if it were taking a slow breath in.

“You feel that?” Kakuzu asked.

“He must be starting the ritual,” Hidan hissed, grabbing Kakuzu’s arm. “Come on, let’s fucking go –I know a shortcut to the altar room.”

Kakuzu let himself get led even as the ground beneath them and above them slowly started to shake. Ancient stones that had lain still for thousands of years were starting to grind up against each other, unsure, as the dark power that had kept them together started to stretch and flex. The magically-burning sconces, lighting their path further down in the tomb, bounced in their holdings.

“How much time do we have before the curse is undone?” Kakuzu called out.

Hidan shrugged as they jogged. “I dunno, we never had any reason to try it out. It was a just-in-case sort of thing, you know,” he stopped as they got to the room of Sasori’s gory bas reliefs and ran his hands along one of the walls. “It’s here somewhere, I think… where are you… ah!”

He rapped his knuckles on a black lacquer plate set into the wall. “Going to need a little of your blood to open this.”

“Why does it have to be mine? Yours won’t do?”

“Lord Jashin’s already got enough of mine,” Hidan grinned. He produced a long black pike, seemingly from thin air, and held it out to Kakuzu, who gave it a wary glare before grabbing it and running it across the back of his hand. Blood peeked out from the shallow cut, and Hidan gathered it on a finger and drew a familiar upside-down triangle on the disc.

“You’d better not’ve cursed me,” Kakuzu grumbled as he handed back the pike. It snapped back to wherever it had come from and Hidan pushed a panel of the wall aside and back – it slipped into a recess in the wall with just a whisper, the ancient mechanisms still perfectly functional.

“If you weren’t cursed before you certainly are now,” Hidan responded, and Kakuzu could hear the smirk in his voice as he set off briskly through the secret door.

“There’s a drop-off up ahead,” Hidan warned from behind him. Sure enough, just a few meters down the stone floor dropped off sharply into a several-meter deep pit. He couldn’t hear it over the sound of the temple rumbling but now he could see it, a black river pouring through unseen canals below them. Hidan came up behind him, taking his forearm as if to secure him from falling as he stared down.

“Flesh-eating beetles,” he explained casually. “They come from the walls. They’re always hungry when they wake up.”

“Right,” Kakuzu said, remembering the beetle jewel that Deidara had shown off. He had to warn him about that after all of this. If he got out alive, that is.

The rotten remains of a rope bridge hung a few meters away from them, out of reach. Below, a river of skittering beetles. Oh, and then above, a convenient rope just a few spans out of reach. Kakuzu grabbed Hidan, slung him over his shoulder despite his violent protestations, and with a running start grabbed the frayed hemp cord and swung across the gorge to the bridge, which, of course, immediately started buckling.

“Kakuzu!” Hidan yelled – he only made it a few snapping slats on the ancient wooden bridge before he lost his footing, and the two tumbled to the ground on the other side, all elbows and knees and ancient curses.

“You could’ve given me a warning!” Hidan gasped from on top of Kakuzu, looking up from where he was splayed on top of him “You damn near knocked me out.”

“If your mummy magic isn’t going to get us out of this mess you’re going to have to get used to manhandling.” Groaning as he rolled and stood up – a new layer of bruises on top of the ones from the plane crash already purpling – he pulled Hidan up to his feet and gave him a brief dust. “Come on, let’s go…”

The rumbling was only increasing in intensity and pitch. It felt like the whole temple complex was grinding itself, like a mortar and pestle, and he really didn’t like the fact that he was directly underneath it all. At least it didn’t seem like the end was immediately imminent. Shikamaru was taking his time with this ritual, it seemed. If Sasori had been the one with the Book of Life he’d’ve finished it up five minutes ago and gone back up for lunch and gin and tonics.

“Here – we’re almost there-“ Hidan jogged in front of them as they got to the end of the hallway. He pointed above them. “We’ll end up right in the altar room from here.” Kakuzu squinted – sure enough, a square of the ceiling had been replaced with some lighter-colored substance, barred with iron. It felt strangely like they were backstage at a child’s musical production down in the dark, short tunnel.

He reached up and found that he could put his hands full against it, and with a grunt he pushed it open enough to glimpse warm light above them.

“Give me a lift and then I’ll get you out too,” Hidan said from behind him. Kakuzu moved to grab him, but then stopped, narrowing his eyes.

“… How do I know you’ll pull me up.”

“Fucking seriously?” Hidan hissed. “Right now, Kakuzu?”

“I don’t see what incentive you have not to lock me down here and finish the job. You could kill Nara, get your heart back and –“

“I gave my word,” Hidan replied, petulant but resolute. “That might not mean much to you but it does to me. I bet you’ve lived your while life distrusting people, but look where that got you.” He gestured to the dark and now very unstable tunnel. “C’mon, you’ve got to trust someone. This might be your last chance.” He extended a hand.

Kakuzu regarded it for a moment, doubting and doubting himself for doubting. A piece of plaster the size of his palm fell through the window above them and scattered as it hit the floor.

Well – if this all fell apart, at least he’d survive it. Jashin would make sure of that.

“Fine.” Setting his jaw, he took Hidan’s hand, then his hip, and hoisted him up. Hidan grabbed the lip of the aperture and pulled himself out – Kakuzu’d appreciate the view up his shendyt a lot more if it were in different circumstances.

Hidan rolled out of sight and then Kakuzu was alone in the dark tunnel, staring up into an empty aperture, face just barely lit by the torches in the room above, his heart in his throat, waiting. Chalk this up to your last glorious misjudgment, Taki, he thought, there’s a reason why you bite every hand anyone ever extended to you –

And then Hidan’s silhouette popped out from above him, arms out, haloed in light.

Kakuzu breathed out hard, smiling, and reached out to grab his wrists. Hidan’s hands found his arms and with a stifled grunt Hidan pulled him out up to his waist, and then to his knees, and then he found his footing and pulled himself up. Hidan reached over to flick dirt from the collar of his shirt and shot him a cocky grin.

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“Shut up.” He whispered. They were in the back of the gilded room where they’d first met, with the broad white pedestal now occupied by Shikamaru some ten yards away, kneeling and reading off of something, squinting. Kakuzu cast a glance around the room. Hidan’s heart had to be somewhere. Just because Hidan didn’t want to _hurt his feelings_ didn’t mean that he wouldn’t take the opportunity to make himself whole again when he had the opportunity.

“Oh, sweet,” Hidan whispered from behind him. Kakuzu turned to look.

“You can’t be serious.”

Hidan twirled his scythe like it weighed nothing (Kakuzu could confirm that it did not,) grinning. “You haven’t seen me in action, have you? Let me give you a demonstration.” And Hidan took off towards the dias, winding his scythe up as the American droned.

Kakuzu could probably have held Hidan back. Killing someone for trying to save the world felt a little ungracious, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Hidan warbled out a battle cry, which was not a wise move – it gave Shikamaru time to turn and see them, shock flitting across his face before it was replaced with stern resolve, and maneuver the heavy golden book onto one forearm while he pulled out a pistol and shot Hidan at near point-blank.

HIdan, caught in mid air just a few feet away, recoiled and spun as he was knocked to the ground with the force of it. Some kind of high caliber Cowboy-style sawed-off, Kakuzu guessed as he ran up to him.

“Nara, hold off on it for a moment, will you?” Kakuzu held out an open palm to him as he knelt down to where Hidan was pulling himself into a kneel, touching the blasted remains of his chest with fascination.

“Of course you’ve been working with him this whole time. Of course!”

“I just don’t want to kill anyone I don’t have to,” Kakuzu said. Really, he’d be fine with killing most people, but probably not Hidan, at least not permanently.

Hidan laughed wildly. The bullet wound was already starting to heal, the unmarked skin around it burbling and stretching over the bone-speckled flesh. He was barely even bleeding. “I forgot how much that hurt, fucker! I’m gonna get you for that!”

“Hidan, shut up.”

Shikamaru looked down hurriedly and started up where he stopped in his reading.

“Your pronunciation is shit, kid,” Hidan cooed, using Kakuzu’s leg to pull himself up, then propping himself on the blunt end of his scythe. “Not even Jashin’d want you as a sacrifice. But I guess you’ll have to do since this one here’s my plus-one.”

“Nara.” He placed his hand on the back of Hidan’s neck, like a mother cat scruffing a kitten, and he looked back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Stop the spell. Destroy Hidan’s heart instead. He won’t be able to regenerate fully and the world still won’t end.”

Shikamaru was sweating in the low flashing light, every muscle tensed as he tried to out-read Kakuzu. A piece of plaster bounced off his shoulder but he kept going on, louder and at a higher pitch.

“Nara!” Kakuzu yelled threateningly.

“C’mon, boss,” Hidan cooed with a facsimile of a sultry pout, looking out at him through bone-white eyelashes. “Please?”

Kakuzu pursed his lips, then let go. Gave Hidan a light push with the tips of his fingers. The nape of his neck was warm and the clasp of his Jashinist necklace was very cool and smooth. Hidan raised his scythe up and back with great solemnity and fixed his eyes on Shikamaru. He took a step forward, and then another, and then another, and then he was falling, violently sent to his knees, his scythe clattering out in front of him and hitting the base of the pedestal with a clang.

“ _-the end of the barren line of Jashin, and may it forever be fallow and buried and may His temples lie dead - ”_ Shikamaru was intoning in Egyptian. Hidan roared with pain behind his teeth, grabbing at his head, his hair.

“Fuck! Kakuzu!!!”

The spell, the Book of Life – they’d wasted so much time. He thought that they’d had more time, and Hidan was writhing in pain, the veins of his forearms turning a sickly gangrenous grey that was climbing up his arms past his elbows. And even now that Jashin was writhing and dying and no longer had His veil cast over him it still felt like a pike was being driven through Kakuzu’s chest seeing him like this, that Hidan was still somehow so precious that he couldn’t stand to see him harmed.

So he pulled out a pistol.

Unfortunately, Shikamaru already had his out, and he had the reflexes of a flighty, determined young man with nothing to lose, and even as Kakuzu pulled the trigger he knew he was done for. It felt like a punch in the chest, the bullet. His own must have struck Nara in the arm, because he dropped the Book of Life and went down clutching it, cursing. Somewhere deeper in the complex there was a deep plangent boom as something heavy fell.

The spell had been interrupted. Had it been finished? The walls were shaking more violently than ever before.

Hidan wasn’t seizing in pain anymore – Kakuzu knelt down next to him and grabbed him by the shoulder to turn him over. His eyes were closed, but the black ink-splotch curse skin that had reached his face seemed to be leeching down and receding. Kakuzu licked his lip and looked up at Nara, who was climbing off the dais, gushing blood from his arm. He raised his pistol at him again.

“Get the fuck out if you know what’s good for you,” he growled.

Nara’s jaw was set in pain. “This whole place is coming down in a few minutes.” He called out. “At least you two’ll be stuck in here forever. It’s what you deserve.”

Kakuzu held his gaze viciously until he turned and hurried out the entrance, and suddenly the two of them were alone again. The Book of Life, dented from its fall; Hidan’s scythe; the last canopic jar with Hidan’s withered heart, left behind. Maybe he would use it after all, once he came to.. Kakuzu looked down at the young priest, now restored and wincing awake, his pristine face splashed with blood. Was that his?.. no, that was Kakuzu’s, he realized, looking down at the pulsating gush of arterial blood.

“Oh, damn,” he murmured, falling down to lean on an elbow next to Hidan.

“Kakuzu? Oi, Kakuzu!” Hidan was pulling himself to his knees now.

“It’s alright…” he said, resigned. Left upper chest, near the middle of his sternum – that was a fatal shot if ever there was one. Damn Americans and their obsession with marksmanship..

Hidan was pressing him down, tearing at his shirt, evidently forgetting everything that he’d learned so far about buttons, getting it open enough to put his hands to the blood gushing out of Kakuzu’s chest. Kakuzu’s hands found his, warm-slick, pressed over the gaping wound, trying to somehow hold it in.

“Fuck, fuck, fucking hell, fuck,” Hidan was hissing in fervent ancient Egyptian. Kakuzu agreed with the sentiment. He didn’t feel like he was in his body right now. Everything felt distant, separated from his senses by a thick hypoxic membrane.

The tomb was shaking, rattling like a train engine, the torches on the wall bouncing erratically as dust and pieces of stone started to shower down on them.

“It’s no use,” Kakuzu growled. It didn’t hurt really, not yet, it was just an immense pressure at his chest and the precipitously increasing lightheadedness. How long did it take to bleed out, again? When a man got shot in the heart? He guessed he’d find out soon enough. Pretty damn soon.

“No, it’s fucking fine,” Hidan insisted through his teeth. “-it’s _fine_ , lemme just-“

“Get your fingers out of there!”

“C’mon, after what you’ve put in me? Shut up.” Despite his protestations, though, and his fingers pressing deeper into the wound, they both knew that they were out of time. The very air around him seemed to sense it, too, as the statues around them started to rattle off their pedestals and crash to the floor. Kakuzu’s teeth were vibrating and Hidan’s yelling was growing in pitch and creativity. “You’re gonna be fucking fine, you know why? Jashin wouldn’t drag you all the way here after 3-fucking-thousand years for you to die like a fucking dungbeatle in this shithole. Okay? He _promised_ me. That’s fucking _binding_!”

Kakuzu hacked out a laugh. Were the lights going out or was his vision starting to go spotty? “Some god he was. Only good for one – hng – one resurrection.”

“Wait!” Hidan started, his hands, pressed over Kakuzu’s macerated heart, clenching. “That’s it! With the right ritual I can – Jashin, it could fucking work, I just need a heart, any fucking heart, where’s that bitch’s book – fucking hold on, Kakuzu, just a minute longer, please –“

The pressure on Kakuzu’s chest disappeared and Hidan was suddenly gone from view. He stared up at the blackness above him as ceiling shrapnel rained down around him. He was cold. Everything was so terribly heavy all of a sudden, even his thoughts. Where was Hidan? He wanted to see him again, provoke him into a temper because he wasn’t used to being mouthed off to, brush his hand over his deathless pristine face and gather him against his chest like they did… when was that? Where’d they been? His chest, which now felt heavier with each breath. What had he been thinking about? Ah, the face of Jashin. Rows of figures impaled on sacrificial pikes, just like him. Wicked.

He wanted to rest his eyes, but Hidan was here now, blurry and muted, now smashing open a canopic jar and grabbing through the pieces, now with a great golden book, kneeling over Kakuzu. He wanted to see him even as his bloodied face took on grotesque skeletal markings before his eyes.

Now a black pike in his hand and the veil of darkness passing over both of them, the air too thick to breathe, the world shaking around them, a vicious pulling in Kakuzu’s chest and the grind of bones and rocks. His skin splitting like ripe fruit through all his old fault-line scars, tracing back to the yawning hole where his heart had just been, fascia and muscle ripped through and bound again outside and in with Jashin’s thread. Almost like a mummy, a patchwork corpse.

But he was gone by that point, and it was a mercy, too. Some children of Jashin were born to take pain, and others to inflict it.

* * *

The sun was slowly breaking the surface of the desert horizon. In the waves of heat already rising from the sand it looked like it was simmering, a vibrant red-gold yolk. Cast in sun-blanched tan and deep purple shadows the sand that covered Hamunaptra, the seat of the temple of Jashin, looked like it had never been disturbed.

A single figure cast a shadow across the sandy plains, staggering resolutely toward the cliff passage that pointed towards Cairo some three day’s walk away. It would be a difficult path for a wounded archaeologist on foot, but Shikamaru had been through worse.

He liked to think that it would be a story that he’d tell his grandchildren some day – his terrible expedition to the City of the Dead and the riches that was buried with it. Or maybe he’d come back in a few years with a team to dig the temple up when Taki and that demon priest were dead.

So Shikamaru tread onwards, limping but confident, with that easy American assurance that everything would turn out well in the end.

A hundred meters above him, with the perfect view of the desert sunrise, two figures stood on the edge of the purpling cliff face.

“Can we go get ‘em now?”

“Patience,” Kakuzu murmured. Hidan’s arms tightened around him, his lips pressed against his shoulder, his chest against Kakuzu’s jagged-stitched back as he watched the explorer pass below them. “Let him get a few mile’s head start and savor it. It’s not as if there’s a chance of him getting away.”

“You’re a cruel bastard, aren’t you,” Hidan replied. “You were really wasted on that lot.” 

Kakuzu heard the smile in his voice. One of Hidan’s hands worked at the ropy black stitches across his chest, holding him closed, holding Hidan’s preserved heart inside of him. The heart that Jashin would have needed to end the world but that instead birthed Kakuzu’s. Kakuzu took his hand, pressed it over where it beat.

“I am.”

“Praise be to Jashin.”

Kakuzu rolled his eyes but Hidan was grinning now, just visible over his shoulder, and he was seized by that familiar swell of affection with the knowledge that an eternity of power and pain now lay spread out before them. He thought to himself, as they watched their next victim pass by, oblivious, that Hamunaptra had indeed provided him the most valuable treasure of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAH! Thanks to everyone for giving me the juice to finish it. Please, please ignore the plot holes, I never aspired to fine literature.  
> I just like the idea of Jashin hand selecting a boyfriend for his very special boy.


End file.
